[barry-cotter]

And yet revealed preference suggests that people shop for flights almost exclusively on price. If you feel like paying an extra hundred or five for happier employees that’s a fine personal preference but people who act like that aren’t a significant enough market segment to be worth catering to.

[TeMPOraL]

"Revealed preferences" need to die. That people shop on price, all other things being equal, is obvious and the driver of the economy. If all else is not equal, but people don't know it or can't meaningfully affect it, they'll still shop on price and any talk of "revealed preferences" here is nonsense.

A typical flyer is separated by at least one layer of abstraction (airline, travel agency, ...) from the labor situation of the flight crew, so there's little visibility into that, and little possibility to affect things with your purchasing choice. How can I "reveal" the real ordering of my preferences if I can't pay $X extra to get a slightly safer flight, because the only other option on the market costs $10X more? At the same time, there's high trust that government organizations ensure that civilian flight is safe to the point any variation is a rounding error not worth thinking about.

[yostrovs]

A typical flyer is not concerned about the pay of pilots. He's concerned about his price to fly. Those that are concerned about pay do so regardless of whether they're flying. They do it because they root for the little guy, or they hate corporations, or they respect pilots. But the point is the two groups are different. They do overlap somewhat, but it's meaningless.